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| Home > Book Reviews of Literary icons > An Equal Music
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| | An Equal Music of Vikram Seth
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 Seth`s An Equal Music is exceptional in that it is so far removed from the Indian context that it stands quite apart while its composition gives reason to speculate on the emergence of a discrete sub genre of the Indian English novel. If the reader had no idea about its author the text would not offer the least clue because neither action nor character, neither theme nor language and style fit into perceived patterns of writing we readily identify with the tradition of Indian English fiction.
It is a very private story told besides through the highly subjective voice of the English musician Michael whose main interest lies in talking about himself as the member of a famous string quartet and as a man who loves Julia, also a musician who, as he finds out, is gradually turning deaf. Both had met as students in Vienna a decade before and fallen in love but had lost contact of each other after he had abandoned her quite unexpectedly and rather ruthlessly. Running into each other coincidentally in London after so many years, both resume their relationship though Julia is married and has a son, only to once and for all part again because of yet another failure on Michael`s part to honour their relationship. However, far more exciting than this love story of sorts is the musical story with its exquisite presentation of details pertaining to examples of classical European compositions, in particular by Schubert and Bach, and its disclosure of the group dynamics of the four members of the Maggiore Quartet, including the portrayal of their differing personalities.
Here we must acknowledge Seth`s profound immersion into and sensitive understanding of a European art as a narrative stance we have not come across in Indian English writing. It suggests his deep love for a musical tradition totally different from his own which he celebrates in a novel where the love story narrated by a high-strung, egomaniac and ever so indifferent male recedes into the background. The total exclusion of Seth`s own culture in An Equal Music does not even allow us to speak of it as a transcultural text but to see it as a contribution to the European music story tradition. It is, indeed, an exceptional `Indian` novel where the epithet `equal` might suggest that European classical music matches its Indian counterpart.
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